Yep, must be the latter!
This must be a meme with the ascendant Left. I was following a story posted on a thread on Thursday by abb (Tax revolt breathtaking in scope, spunk). The thread and abb's related story were about a brewing property tax revolt in Chapel Hill, NC:
Tax revolt meeting draws up to 1,400 people (Chapel Hill, NC)
It seems that the local taxing authorities had started re-evaluation surveys a couple of years ago at the height of the real estate bubble, and were delivering the stinking inflated valuation payload just now, after everyone's house valuations dropped like a lead balloon.
Well, it seems as though a lot of residents flipped out about it, and showed up to this tax meeting.
I tracked abb's article back, and started looking at local articles on the subject.
It was amazing. One local rag [The Carrboro Citizen] was covering for the local government, giving all sorts of excuses as to why this had happened. I also saw an article (Common sense and taxes) where the comments started out anti-government, then several people moved in and started pumping the pro-government line. One poster insinuated that it was "a handful of national players" (outsiders) that was doing the "agitating".
I guess some of the locals didn't get the "Spread The Wealth" memo...